AQI

Basically, I’ve been watching the AQI for southern California on this website and I try to stay inside on days when it’s in the higher end of the “moderate” range. Rainy days tend to be better air quality days, but we don’t have a ton of those.

While in Ontario two weeks ago, I was curious what the air quality difference between Los Angeles and Ontario is, so I looked up an Ontario AQI index. I found that while it seems to use the same numbers, the interpretation of those numbers in Ontario is a little different.

Here’s the Southern California scale:

And here’s the Ontario AQI:

If they’re using the same International AQI scale, then something is very wrong. Ontario says 50+ is poor. Southern California thinks it’s moderate!

According to Health Canada, 4,200 Canadian deaths were associated with long-term exposure to poor-quality air between 1998 and 2000. That’s too many! More interesting tid bits about Canada’s AQI can be found here.

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Does anybody know whether the USA and Canada are using the same AQI scale?